


The Responsibility of a Promise

by Sweety_Mutant



Series: Heartbreaking AUs [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: AU for episode 3x09, Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon Divergence, Eventual Spoilers for Episode 3x09, I BROKE MY HEART, I hope!!!, Sorry Not Sorry, internal POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 02:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6266299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sweety_Mutant/pseuds/Sweety_Mutant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The crowd was here to watch him die. All of them. All but one, who had promised to save him...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Responsibility of a Promise

**Author's Note:**

> Okay... I could not wait for episode XXVII so I wrote a heartbreaking AU ( I hope it will be an AU)  
> I don't own Black Sails, the characters are safer that way.  
> Oh and before you read, take a tissue.

      He had been the best of Nassau. The strongest of all of them.

  
Yet there was not a man on that damned island who would have lifted a finger to save him. There was not a man in that crowd that had not been insulted or threatened by Charles Vane.  
His ennemies, they were. More so than England’s or Spain’s. They had gathered around the gallows to drink his blood, to step on his corpse.  
Billy felt surrounded by onlookers, waiting for the trapped animal’s demise, his last breath. They were hungry for the last kick of a foot against death, the last convulsion of the strangled throat.  
Billy could already see it. The leonine body suddenly limp, devoid of life and raped of its terror and glory.  
He could imagine the rotting corpse, left naked for all to see and shiver. Prey to the birds, scorched by the sun and salt. Left for weeks, a sad, swinging token of victory.

  
Billy was furious. He was powerless to stop this vision from becoming real. He was as chained as Vane, about to watch a gloating Rogers deprive Vane of the honourable death he deserved.  
Billy had failed. He was burning with shame, burning from the promise he had made to Flint. He had promised that he would prevent the execution. That he would bring Vane back alive.  
But what power did he have against the street, when said street, sly and paddling in the pardons, was all too happy to hang an effigy of their former freedom.  
The crowd went silent. Billy swallowed. Vane stepped on the gallows, his feet bound, his hands limp before him, shackled. Yet his bearing was the same as always. Proud. Dangerous. He would never give up in front of such a crowd. But Billy could see the details. The painful signs that changed everything. The bruises, the bullet wound. The dried blood, the circles under his eyes.  
The tiny, unconscious glance to where Eleanor stood, indifferent to the sacrifice she had so much wished for.

  
     The guard began to read the charges.  
Billy could not keep his eyes off Vane. Vane’s own were set on the sea. Drinking for the last time in the grey blue horizon line.  
Suddently - no, no, too soon!- a guard yanked Vane by the shoulders. His shackles clinked, his feet rattling on the wooden boards.  
Viciously pulling at his long hair, the guard slipped the noose around Vane’s neck.  
Yet Vane did not flinch. Not a move, not a sound.

  
Billy’s heart was beating too fast. Beating like it was himself that stood an inch away from death. He felt sweat trickling down the back of his neck. He could not bear the tension. He could not bear Vane’s calm.  
Vane’s eyes swept over the crowd. Under his glare, some recoiled, most sneered. Who was afraid of a dying animal? Who feared his hatred?  
His eyes found Billy. Recognition.  
A second passed like an hour. An eternity that they spent staring at each other. Seeing a friendly face besides his deathbed, a small comfort.  
Sorry, screamed Billy’s eyes. I wanted to save you. I really… I promise, I tried. I promise…  
_Save me_. Hopeless? Barely a nod of the head. Desperate. _Save me Billy Bones. Do not allow them the satisfaction. Take their fucking victory away._  
To fall at the hand of a comrade, that was a comfort he was willing to endure.

  
Silentely, Billy cocked his pistol.  
There were too many soldiers. No way he could get away.  
Drums rolled. He aimed, shot.  
On the gallows, the body crumbled. A single bullet through the skull.  
Time stopped. The crowd began to stir, the noise a proper requiem.

  
There was no way Billy could get away. He ran.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry! TT_TT  
> I know I am a monster, forgive me... But this fic had to be written!  
> If you want to leave a death threat, or cry with me, feel free ;)


End file.
